in a higher sense is identified with the self. By ‘higher’ I do not mean ‘more moral,’ and I am prepared to explain what I do mean by the above. I would on this point refer to an article by Mr. Stout (in Mind, N.S. No. 19) with which I find myself largely though not wholly in agreement. I must however hope at some future time to deal with the matter, and will here state my main result. “It is will where an idea realizes itself, provided that the idea is not formally contrary to a present resolve of the subject”—so much seems certain. But there is uncertainty about the further proviso, “Provided also that the idea is not too contrary materially to the substance of the self.” Probably, the meaning of “will” being really unfixed, there is no way of fixing it at a certain point except arbitrarily.
Since the above was written an enquiry into the nature of volition, with a discussion of many questions concerning conation, activity, agency, and attention, has appeared in Mind. See Nos. 40, 41, 43, 44, 46, 49, and parts of 51.
p. 513. With regard to the “familiar Greek dilemma,” the attentive reader will not have failed to observe that, when I later on, p. 544, maintain that no possible truth is quite true, I have explained that this want of truth is not the same thing as intellectual falsehood or fallibility. The “sceptical” critic therefore who still desires to show that I myself have fallen into this dilemma, will, I think, do well still to ignore pp. 544-7.
A probability, I may here go on to remark, of many millions to one against the truth of some statement may be a very good and sufficient reason for our putting that, for some purpose or purposes, on one side and so treating it as nothing. But no such probability does or can justify us in asserting the statement not to be true. That is not scepticism at all, but on the contrary it is mere dogmatism. Further I would here repeat that any probability in favour of general scepticism which rests on psychological grounds, must itself be based on an assumption of knowledge with regard to those grounds. Hence if you make your sceptical conclusion universal here, you destroy your own premises. And, on the other side, if you stop short of a universal conclusion, perhaps the particular doctrine which you wish to doubt is more certain by far than even your general psychological premises. I have (p. 137) remarked on this variety of would-be scepticism, and I find that a critic in the Psychological Review, Vol i, No. 3, Mr. A. Hodder, has actually treated these remarks as an attempted refutation on my part of scepticism in general. It probably did not occur to him that, in thus triumphantly proving my incompetence, he was really giving the measure of his own insight into the subject. With reference to another “sceptical”
